This 38th ICANN International public meeting marked the 3rd year and 10th round of the ICANN Fellowship Program, which was noted in the President’s report during the Welcome ceremony on Monday to start off the week. A note of thanks to all of those community members who have supported the program and its candidates, providing guidance and knowledge to help these participants understand the importance of their role in the ICANN community.
Chosen from a field of 159 applicants, there were 24 fellows from 21 countries participating in the Brussels meeting last month. These individuals represented various sectors of the ICANN community including 5 from the ccTLD community, 16 from government, 2 from civil society, and 3 each out of the private sector and academia.
11 of the fellows are alumni from at least one of the past 9 programmes, who worked before and during the meeting to mentor and engage the incoming group. This round included 10 first time ICANN meeting participants and 3 individuals who had previously attended ICANN meetings, but are first time fellows. The feedback from these particular individuals was that the experience was quite different and provided insight into the community that they had not been privy to while attending the meetings without this type of support.
All of the ICANN regions were represented, though the emphasis for Brussels was on the European regions as required by the Fellowship program selection criteria. Fellows hailed from Afghanistan, Albania, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Romania, Gambia, Haiti, Indonesia, Mexico, Moldova, Republic of Palau, Saint Lucia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
We look forward to seeing many of these names and faces at future ICANN meetings, contributing to the many decision-making processes in ICANN such as public forums, supporting organizations and advisory committees, and perhaps even as potential members of the ICANN board.
The next round of the ICANN Fellowship program, to select participants for the ICANN 39 meeting in Cartagena, will open before the end of this month, July 2010, and the online application will remain open for 6 weeks following that announcement on the ICANN home page.
To see the final participants’ names and photo, and to learn more about the Fellowships Program, please visit http://www.icann.org/en/fellowships/